


Wall Following

by murderofonerose (atmilliways)



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: M/M, Mordhaus is a living maze, Stairs, artificial height difference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28758069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atmilliways/pseuds/murderofonerose
Summary: The internet was down, and Toki was bored. Charles had promised them that it would be back up within an hour or two—a passenger plane had crashed and taken out the infrastructure for Mordland and several nearby cities, that was all, repairs were already underway, blah blah blah. But in the meantime, there was nothing to do.
Relationships: Pickles the Drummer/Toki Wartooth
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Wall Following

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was, Toki x Pickles kissing in a stairwell, giving them an artificial height difference.
> 
> I dunno what Pickles is upset about, but it's probably family/Seth related. 
> 
> "The best-known rule for traversing mazes is the wall follower, also known as either the left-hand rule or the right-hand rule. If the maze is simply connected, that is, all its walls are connected together or to the maze's outer boundary, then by keeping one hand in contact with one wall of the maze the solver is guaranteed not to get lost and will reach [an exit]..." - Wikipedia

The internet was down, and Toki was bored. Charles had promised them that it would be back up within an hour or two—a passenger plane had crashed and taken out the infrastructure for Mordland and several nearby cities, that was all, repairs were already underway, blah blah blah. But in the meantime, there was nothing to do. 

Well. Not nothing. Murderface and Skwisgaar were doing a marathon binge-watch of highly disturbing movies, which never ended well. Nathan had locked himself in his room to browse through a big stack of dirty magazines to browse through. He hadn’t even been able to _find_ Pickles. 

So Toki was just wandering. He couldn’t decide where he wanted to wander _to_ , so he’d just put his hand on the wall and followed it, taking every right turn and going through every door on his right that wasn’t locked. Soon quickly he found himself in areas of the mansion that he probably hadn’t strolled through in months if not longer. 

Mordhaus was a big place. Most of the rooms were relatively empty, all cold stone and high ceilings, but there were exceptions. 

Toki passed through what he vaguely recognized as Pickles’ endangered species room, which for some reason now contained all the remains of the sandscape that Murderface had tried to put in the main living room. “Ugh, why didn’t we just throw alls this outs?” he muttered to himself, kicking absently at an unplugged, half-buried neon sign as he passed by it. 

Another room was filled with all the broken or rejected arcade games, swallowed into storage and then forgotten. There were shutters over the windows, making it gloomy and difficult to navigate. His steps stirred up dust—like moving through a graveyard on a foggy night. The next room down the hall from it contained nothing but broken mirrors. 

After all that, opening a random door and finding himself in the library was a surprise. Toki trailed his fingers over the edges of shelves and the spines of books, nearly falling over backwards as he looked up and up and up. This space—the word _room_ hardly did it justice, it could have held a hundred of the storage rooms that he had just been wandering through—was dusty too but it was an entirely different quality of dust. It smelled of old paper and fairytales and musty hints of vanilla. 

He’d been here before, of course, but didn’t recognize this entrance. Made sense that there would be a lot of them though, for something so big. 

“How comes we don’t hangs out in here?” Toki wondered out loud. His voice drifted out into the huge space, the stories-high windows painting bars of light on the dusty air, and seemed entirely swallowed. 

Oh. That was why. The lack of echo made it . . . a little creepy. 

Something occurred to him and he paused. He hadn’t noticed any sound before, but something was missing, it was . . . quieter. But it was harder to track where a noise was coming from once it had stopped, so he shrugged and kept walking. Probably just a servant or something. There would be librarians around here somewhere, right? Maybe if he ran into one of them they could help him find a book or maybe even some printed porn to help him pass the time until the internet came back on. 

The next right turn came suddenly, though, and Toki found himself rounding the edge of the towering bookshelf-wall to face the entrance to a narrow spiral stone staircase. Shrugging, he abandoned the idea of reading as quickly as he’d picked it up, and started climbing. It was one of those straight up spirals like you found in churches and castles in Europe, the kind that went up towers. He could put one hand to the stone wall and the other to the thin column that ran straight through from bottom to top, without even extending his arms all the way. Elbows still at his sides, pretty much. 

When he’d gone up a few turns, he heard the mystery sound start up again. It sounded like it was coming from . . . up ahead?

Three turns later, he just about tripped over Pickles. He also managed to place the sound, finally: it was muffled crying. 

“Pickle?” he asked

At the same time Pickles said, “The fuck’re you doing here,” and hastily tried to wipe his running nose on one of his wristbands. 

Toki leaned against the curved wall of the staircase awkwardly, trying to feel a little less like he was standing over his bandmate like an asshole. “Um, just wandering arounds. Why ams you doing?” 

Ugh, he _hated_ the way his voice climbed about an octave and got all squeaky whenever he felt put on the spot. But if Pickles noticed he didn’t comment on it, which Toki really appreciated. 

“Nothin’, nothin’.” With a sniff that came out more like a honk, Pickles squinted up at him with reddened eyes—from getting high, _obviously_ , per band agreement to not take interest in each others’ personal lives, Toki reminded himself. “Jest . . . admiring the, uh, architecture in here! Do you have any idea how far up this staircase goes?”

“No. . . . How fars?”

Pickles sighed and produced a joint and lighter from his pockets. “No idea. Anyway, yer here now. . . . Want a hit?” He took two in quick succession himself. 

“Sures.” Toki sat, scrunching in next to Pickles’ sneakers on the hard stone step, back to the curved wall. “You knows if the wifi ams back yets? I forgots my phone in my room.”

“Dunno. I, uh, threw mine off the roof,” Pickles mumbled, sounding like the subject made him want to curl up into a ball and die. Before Toki could remind himself not to ask why, he glanced up and saw Pickles’ eyes welling up—he tried not to think _again_ but, well, the word was right there on the tip of his brain. (In English, even! Wowee, he was getting good at this second language thing.) “Nnnnnnnnanyway, here’s . . . theat hit, buddy. . . .”

Toki took the joint and lighter before he could drop them and smoked obediently, watching Pickles out of the corner of his eye. 

Clearly Pickles was not okay, and even without that band rule it would be dumb to ask about something so obvious. It was actually more awkward sitting there while the guy tried not to make a sound by holding his breath, face going slowly red from the effort, than it would be to say something about it. 

“Pickle?” Toki asked cautiously, and took a damp blink in his direction as a good sign. “Ams okay if you gots to, you knows. I won’ts tell anysbody.”

The breath Pickles was holding broke and he heaved fresh air unto his lungs; Toki knew instinctively that he was going to hold his breath again, and acted without thinking. 

He stretched up, meeting Pickles’ bowed head to fit their mouths together. It shocked Pickles into taking another breath, which was kind of the point. Then, because it seemed natural from this point, Toki gave him a little peck on the lips. Just to be friendly. 

And then Pickles’ hands were snaking into his hair and pulling him closer, pulling him up with a suddenness that sent Toki’s arms jerking out to catch himself on the edge of the next stair so he didn’t fall. The return kiss wasn’t a peck but open-mouthed and searing and desperate. If Toki made any noise of surprise, Pickles swallowed it faster than the library downstairs—and if Pickles was a new room he was exploring there would be lingering smoke in the air rather than dust motes, empty vodka bottles on the floor, and a caged animal throwing itself in earnest against the bars. 

For Toki, who knew plenty about having a caged animal inside, it was a room he felt comfortable in. Enough that his first instinct was to spare a hand to splay across the other man’s back as he settled with his knees to either side of Pickles legs on the step below. And it felt . . . good. 

_Really_ good. 

Especially, _especially_ , when Toki was vividly reminded of Pickles’ tongue piercing by the twin balls of a curved barbell being used to electrifying effect. The guy kissed him like he was trying to tell him something, taking the deluge of whatever he was all twisted up over and pouring those feelings into Toki without words, just the taste of vodka, stale smoke, and salt. Didn't matter that stuff was getting lost in translation—the point was to get that caged animal _out._

“Wo _wee_ ,” he gasped when Pickles let him go to breathe, eyes fluttering open. When had he closed them? 

Looking at his bandmate now was like seeing someone for the first time. (And not just because of the artificial reversal in height difference reversal.) He’d never thought about the drummer as kissable before, but his mouth was hanging open because he couldn’t stop panting and all he could think about was the complicated question of whether or not he wanted more. . . .

For a second, they just looked at each other, and Pickles’ eyes glittered with something that Toki didn’t know how to read, but it seemed like a good thing. A _really_ good thing. 

Then Pickles shivered, suddenly too jittery to look him in the eye, and muttered, “Fuck. _Fuck_ , I shouldn’ta done that. Jest forget it, I shouldn’t’ve—”

Toki interrupted him with another kiss, because hell yeah he wanted more. A decade ago, when he’d first joined Dethklok, the age difference between them and the social lines being brazenly crossed would’ve given him pause, but that was a decade ago. He’d been steeped in fame and fortune for long enough now that he was used to getting whatever he wanted without having to worry about consequences. He liked Pickles well enough and it felt good, so why not do it?

As soon as their lips touched again, the jitteriness seemed to dissolve. Pickles kissed back with just as much intensity as the first time, leaning back on Toki’s hand, pulling him into leaning further forward until they could feel the heat from each other’s bodies. And then Pickles arched and tilted his hips needily against Toki’s abs—“ _Ohshit_!”

Not a good idea, on the stairs. He’d slipped off the step, and might’ve slid right down the stairs if not for throwing both arms around Toki’s neck to cling for dear life. The hand Toki had on his back did the remaining work of holding Pickles to him as the suddenly adrenaline-fueled moment stretched for what seemed like a very long time. 

Then Pickles snorted, a warm tickle of air that he turned into Toki’s neck that turned into a steady chuckle, building steadily into an actual laugh. Toki bit his lip, not wanting Pickles to think he was laughing at him . . . but then a giggle slipped out, and he was done for. He flopped back to sit with his back against the curved wall again and brought Pickles with him, the drummer settling effortlessly across his lap, and they cracked up until the tears in Pickles’ eyes were from hilarity instead of whatever he’d been crying about before. 

“You’s okay?” Toki managed after a minute or two, pressing a balled fist against his mouth to try and contain himself. 

“Dood,” Pickles giggled, grinning down at him as he wiped at his streaming eyes, “I’m fine. Thanks. Fer, y’know, catching me and shit.”

“No problems.” Toki grinned back. A tiny, niggling part of him wondered if they were just going to laugh off _all_ of what had just happened, though. . . . Because that wowee really had been heartfelt, and his lips still tingled faintly. Not to mention the fact that Pickles was now in his lap, leaning slightly into his abs, and there was . . . body heat between them. 

He wanted to ask if this was okay. If they could keep going. 

. . . Okay, he was going to ask. 

“Pickle?”

“Yeah?”

“Um,” Toki said, and felt heat flair in his cheeks, too. “Ummmm. . . .” 

Fuck. No, it was too. . . . And he hadn’t woken up prepared to deal with something like this today. . . . He was going to chicken out. 

“Um . . . where’s that joint go, anyways?” he asked, and chuckled nervously to hide his own disappointment in himself. 

“Huh? Oh.” Pickles looked around and shrugged. “I guess _that_ fell down the stairs. Whoops.” He smirked. “Heh, worth it.”

Toki’s breath nearly caught in his throat. “It was?”

“Yeeah.” Pickles patted him on the jaw, the touch lingering longer than was strictly necessary. A pleased shiver ran up Toki’s spine as the other man fiddled with the end of one side of his fu manchu. “I, uh. I really needed that. Hey, question though—How’d you find me here? I’ve been holing up here for years whenever I gotta—er, need some privacy, and nobody’s ever showed up like this before.”

Ruefully, Toki said, “I wasn’t realies tryings to. . . . I was boreds, so I makes all right turns to see how long it takes until I gets back to my room.”

One ginger eyebrow shot up at that. “In here? Dood, that could take years. What if ya got lost? How come ya didn’t bring your phone?”

He shrugged. “I figures if I ams lost I cans just turns around and goes back, just make all lefts torns.”

“You crazy asshole,” Pickles said with surprising fondness, and leaned down abruptly for another quick kiss. “Don’t worry, I know a short way back. I could get you back to yer room in no time. Lickety-split.”

They stared at each other, the heat between them spiking and sparking again at the implication of _rooms_ and _beds_ and . . . going there together, and they rapidly came to a silent understanding. 

“C’mahn, get up, I’ll lead the way!”

“I’m rights behinds you!!”


End file.
